The town centre of Deception Bay was contained in a handful of streets running off the main stretch, with bigger farms and places with acreage spilling out into the undulating landscape to the west, cliff tops to the east. Jack Barratt’s small unit was in a street parallel to the main street. In the marked police car outside, Randall had been replaced by a cop on morning shift called Stu. He climbed out of the car as soon as we pulled up.

‘All quiet here,’ he said, stretching.

‘Any sign of a cat?’ I asked.

Stu pointed to a huge gum tree with branches like open arms. ‘Couple of bloody big possums, but no cat.’

Wearing police-issue latex gloves, we entered the unit using Jack’s keys. The place smelled stale. In the lounge room, a hightech bachelor-sized TV took up almost an entire wall, but the furniture was classic St Vinnies. The first thing we did was look for traces of a cat. No tins of cat food in the pantry, no kitty litter tray, and nothing in the fridge that looked like cat food.

‘The feed-my-cat line was definitely code for something.’ I closed the fridge and looked around the kitchen. ‘But what?’

Wozza shrugged and wandered down the short passageway towards the bedroom. I left him to it and headed into the laundry. There was a washing basket half-filled with dirty clothes. I tipped it up and checked all the pockets. Nothing. I returned the clothes to the basket. There were two cupboards, side by side. One was a broom cupboard and the other contained shelves with the usual laundry detergents, cleaning products and household tools: hammer, paintbrush and a couple of screwdrivers. I removed the lids of every bottle and container and checked the contents were legitimate. I was just about to close the doors to both cupboards when I noticed something; the base of the broom cupboard was slightly higher than the base of the cupboard next to it.

I selected a screwdriver and wedged it into the join at the bottom, then took the hammer and tapped the handle of the screwdriver, forcing it between the panel and the support below. I tapped downwards, using the screwdriver as a lever to pop the panel upwards. Beneath, I found a cavity.

‘Wozza!’ I called.

It was clever, really. Once I forced open the panel, I could see it was hinged in such a way that it could be opened like a door. I lay on the floor, looking up under the wood, and spied a small lever. I pressed it and the catch clicked. Wozza photographed the procedure on the station camera.